Photo: Courtesy of Cainiao

Supermarkets and logistics firms are beefing up efforts to boost supply of daily essential goods for residents in Shanghai, where a broad manufacturing resumption campaign has started while trying to control the coronavirus from spreading.

As of Monday, more than 80 percent of Walmart stores in Shanghai have resumed online business operation, offering community group-buying services. In addition, three of ithe high-end membership Sam's Club stores in the city now provide online ordering and community group-buying services, Walmart replied to the Global Times when asked on Monday.

Out of the 26 stores of hypermarket chain RT-Mart in Shanghai, 24 have resumed online operations, providing services for more than 500 residential compounds where residents could place orders online and get their deliveries the next day.
 
One of its physical stores in Jinshan District has resumed in-person business, according to a report by Shanghai's Xinmin Evening News on Sunday.

Previously, RT-Mart dispatched 600 employees from East China's Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces to assist Shanghai.

Separately, Carrefour Shanghai said earlier that about 80-90 percent of its stores have resume operation as of April 23, though some of its stores are still waiting for local authorities' environmental assessments. All Carrefour stores in Shanghai will resume online business by May 1.

In addition to supermarkets, logistics firms are also picking up the pace in resuming deliveries. As of Sunday, Alibaba Group's Cainiao had delivered and allocated 15,000 tons of materials for Shanghai, the company told the Global Times on Monday.

"We are launching a tough battle on a street-by-street and community-by-community basis to speed up the recovery of distribution. Currently, two-thirds of the distribution sites in Shanghai are conducting deliveries as usual, and the service area exceeds more than half of the streets in Shanghai," said Zheng Yang, Cainiao's executive in charge of the supply chain for Tmall Supermarket.

Due to daily epidemic fluctuations, the retailers' distribution time will be dynamically adjusted according to actual needs, Zheng noted.

Jiading Logistics Park - Cainiao's largest digitally intelligent e-commerce warehouse in Shanghai - maintains a high daily shipment volume, and it has been under normal operation since the latest wave of Omicron variant in Shanghai. It is currently the main delivery point for Tmall Supermarket in the city.

Apart from efforts to guarantee daily essentials for residents, the local government has moved to restart resumption of manufacturing plants in China's largest industrial hub.

The Shanghai municipal government made a "whitelist of 666 companies" that would be prioritized for resuming production before others. The list is mostly comprised of auto and auto parts factories, leading equipment makers, medical companies and high-tech firms. Among these, 70 percent have resumed production now, Vice Mayor Zhang Wei said at a press conference on Friday.

Vehicles have rolled off the assembly lines at the automakers like the state-owned SAIC Motor and US electric vehicle (EV) giant Tesla, according to Zhang.

After more than 20 days, about 25 percent of employees at Nio's technology research and development center have resumed work, as it is important for them to work on-site in the laboratory to research smart cars, according to a report by Shanghai-based Knews on Monday. 

The employees will work under the closed-loop management, and Anting Town, Shanghai's Jiading District, where Nio is based, will provide them with nucleic acid testing services on a regular basis to prevent the epidemic from spreading.

Global Times